


Magein

by grainjew



Series: stared at the sun and the sun smiled back and called itself pirate king (or: loyalty, on the high seas) [10]
Category: One Piece
Genre: (in the bonus chapter), Chapter 901, Gen, Haki (One Piece), Loyalty, anime spoilers through chapter 901 dont read this if youre anime only etc etc, facts about me: cries bc i love jinbe and luffy so much, i WANTED to write wano jinbe loyalty fic but he hasnt turned up there yet so this is 2nd best, there's a bonus chapter now!! I hope u enjoy!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-08-25 01:14:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16651483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grainjew/pseuds/grainjew
Summary: Jinbe and Luffy, and duty beyond hope in the shadow of Big Mom's fleet.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fallingwish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallingwish/gifts).



> another whole cake island loyalty fic joins the pile!! can i be stopped?? no. no i cannot. here are [the sanji one](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14537493) and [the nami one](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15302100/chapters/35500485) if you are curious though
> 
> anyways hi this was really fun but im never doing a fic version of a canon scene ever again, coordinating with the manga and trying to replicate oda's gorgeous panelling in words is a pain and a half

Jinbe was exhausted. It was a bone-deep, soul-crushing tiredness lurking just beneath nearly-spent adrenaline, a sort of tiredness he recognized instantly but hardly ever experienced. He was exhausted, and as Wadatsumi tumbled them out of his mouth and back onto the _Thousand Sunny_ ’s deck, he felt all the blood rush to his head, blinding.

He blinked rapidly until blackness faded to spotty greys faded to vision and a picture out of his nightmares came into focus.

The _Thousand Sunny_ was a wreck, barely limping along even with Nami's excellent navigation and Jinbe at the helm. The Sun Pirates were fighting a losing battle to get them all out safe despite Jinbe requesting they make themselves scarce before he put them in danger. The Straw Hat Pirates had their captain back, but none of them were in a fit state to fight after a twelve-hour chase and the hectic day preceding it, and Luffy even less than the rest. A victory over Sweet Commander Katakuri was awe-inspiring and unprecedented, but it was clear that it had come at a cost, and that cost was the blood staining Luffy's bandages and the way he tried not to tremble every time he stood.

And beyond them, behind them, loomed Big Mom's flagship, massive and carrying her children, manifold and out for blood.

Wadatsumi stuttered an explanation to Luffy, part apology, part desperate restitution. Charlotte Oven heated the ocean. Wadatsumi screamed.

Jinbe took a deep breath, and made his decision.

“Stand down, Wadatsumi!” he shouted, hoping his resolve would overpower the tremble of exhaustion in his voice. “Aladine! Everyone!”

Instead of listening to him, they turned and bid him to flee, waved farewell with the smiles of those who know they might die and have made peace with it.

 _Be selfish_ , Aladine had told him. _You’ve done enough_.

Not at this cost.

If any of the crew were to die, he would never be able to carry that guilt.

He made another quick assessment of the _Thousand Sunny_ , and then turned to the Straw Hats, Nami with her sharp eyes on their pursuers, Carrot and Brooke dripping water, wild-eyed, Chopper, fretting, his wide eyes anxious in their concern, draping a blanket over his captain. Luffy, who stared back at Jinbe blankly, flicked his eyes continually between the members of his crew like he was counting them, and then counting them again, and then again.

The wind tugged at the tattered sails, and Jinbe explained in as calm and steady a tone he could muster what they would all need to do to get away safely, praying that they would listen.

“What are you saying, Jinbe?” Luffy pinned him with that sharp, piercing gaze Jinbe remembered from meeting him slight and grim-eyed in Impel Down, the outrage in his tone edging on disbelief, cracking a little as he raised his voice. “What’s that explanation for?”

Jinbe clenched his fists, braced himself against the tide gathering behind Luffy’s eyes. “I can’t leave them behind!”

He turned away, to watch the battle-line thin like fishing wire of friends he had led for ten years, known for longer, flounder against all the might of an Emperor.

“Alright! I understand!” said Luffy, a desperate energy plastered over his trembling exhaustion like a sloppy bandage. “Then we’ll also—!”

Jinbe spun back around to see him struggling to his feet, holding the wound in his side like his guts were about to spill out. He bit back a rebuke about taking care to rest, despite Chopper’s harried motions, and focused all his frightened urgency on Luffy instead. “They’re guarding our rear to help the ship escape! We’ve made it this far, but if the flagship and fleet continue to chase us, we won’t be able to make it out!” Luffy was looking at him over his shoulder now, face blank again in that assessing way Jinbe wasn’t sure he would ever get used to. “Please leave the rear guard to me!” When had he started begging? “I will fulfill this duty, and return alive!”

He felt himself breathing hard, from emotion or exertion or exposure he did not know, and then he was drawn out of the desperate haze of his pleading by some instinct. Then he saw Luffy, facing him fully again, standing tall, the blanket over his shoulders catching a small breeze to billow like a sail, and all of a sudden Jinbe was caught anew in the burning inescapable ferocity of that gaze, netted like a herring for the evening haul.

“Don’t forget, Jinbe,” said Luffy, level, assured, and the rare tone of his voice, pure authority accented with the faintest hint of conqueror’s haki to make him the axis upon which spun the world, stilled every objection forming on Jinbe’s lips like the sea stilled at dawn. “I am your captain now!”

And Jinbe felt all his presumptions, all his pretentions, all his remonstrations and his arguments fall away as Luffy’s claim rang in his ears with all the finality of moonset at midnight.

Jinbe, ten years the captain of the Sun Pirates, was used to command for all he had never desired it. He was the one who picked them all up after Fisher Tiger's death, when they were floundering in grief; he was the one who accepted the offer to become a member of the Seven Warlords to protect as many people as he could; he was the one responsible for the entire crew’s safety, for decisions and for battle-orders and for changes of course.

And Jinbe, newly helmsman of the Straw Hat Pirates, had overstepped his bounds.

He broke gazes with Luffy, suddenly ashamed; looked down at the rest of his captain instead, the totality of him, standing with the presence of a King even now, all the possessive certainty in the world pulled tight around him, rightful authority falling like satin from his shoulders, an aura far more encompassing than anything his tiny, beaten body could indicate emanating endlessly outwards from him.

“We’re not stopping this ship!”

He had sworn himself to Luffy in defiance of an Emperor, weathered her fury by his faith in the man who would be Pirate King alone, and now he owed his captain his respect and his obedience. Even if Luffy forbade him from helping the Sun Pirates. Even then. Even then.

“We’ll be waiting in Wano,” declared Luffy, and Jinbe snapped his attention back to Luffy’s face, set like an anchor at port, felt his eyes widening in a sort of disbelief. “You must come!”

The command pulled him taut as a bowline, the beat of his heart so unexpectedly loud in his ears that he almost didn’t hear Nami’s outraged shout of “ _Luffy_!”

He stared at Luffy a moment more, shocked and breathless, and then shut his eyes against Luffy’s burning presence, or against the relieved tears threatening to draw themselves out from deep behind his eyelids, and dipped his body in a full bow, felt from the heart, felt his cloak flare up behind him.

“My gratitude, Captain!”

He straightened up; impossible, momentary contentment swept through him like salmon-colored sunrise and took shape in a smile.

“Even if you die, don’t die!” shouted Luffy, all the hurricane of him stilled for just this essential moment, until no other moment existed in time.

_I understand, Captain._

And Jinbe tossed himself overboard to make a stand with his former crew, because an order like that was absolute.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i did a kind of... translations mix and match. tbf it's mostly that one fan translation but i did pull from others, and i gotta acknowledge ao3 user wordsdear who tossed me the official translation of a few of these pages
> 
> (the title means shield in hebrew, btw. usually it's transliterated magen but you see it all sorts of ways)
> 
> also, im rereading the riddle-master trilogy, so my descriptive style is even more pulling from patricia mckillip's descriptive style than normal, haha; i recommend those books a lot!! read them if you like harpists and pretty descriptions and then come talk to me on tumblr @[grainjew](http://grainjew.tumblr.com/) because folks, i like talking to people


	2. Bonus Ficlets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I figured I should toss the Jinbe introspection ficlets that i drew from to write Magein here, like I did for the Nami loyalty fic! I'm very fond of them

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, they're named after clown acts/improv games we teach the kids at summer camp again. I have a theme going u guys. Although at this rate I'm gonna have to hit my mentor up for her masterlist because I'm starting to run low on names, lmao

**Meet and Greet**

 

Jinbe met Luffy in the depths of Impel Down, the two of them alone and desperate.

Luffy stared and stared at him with the most discerning gaze he had ever had directed his way short of Whitebeard or Tai or Queen Otohime themselves. Jinbe stared back, trying to distinguish the worth and fire Ace had harped on (and on, and on) about in the slim, grim-eyed boy on the other side of the bars. And then, before Jinbe was quite done, Luffy gave the word for his release and Ivankov of the Revolutionary Army saw it done.

Luffy won Jinbe's respect in one of the hells they passed through, somewhere between Level Six and the Surgeon of Death's submarine-ship.

On their hijacked Marine vessel, standing at the helm, he found himself deferring to Luffy's wordless orders to desist from fighting Crocodile, consulting him on changes of course, looking to him for confirmation, despite that his own age and experience should have given him precedence in their odd little alliance. Sometime later he would reflect on the odd comfort it had given him, to have something like a captain again, but in the moment everyone was screaming, dying, out for blood, and Jinbe watched Luffy on the battlefield, the way he gave all of himself and more, tore his heart out and tossed shards of his life away for his brother, the blank horror in his face when Ace died in his arms. Jinbe picked him up and ran, dedicating his entire being to Luffy's safety.

Jinbe learned about Luffy's crew on Amazon Lily, the two of them broken with grief, bandaged and bloody and emotionally abraded.

Luffy counted down shaking fingers, something Jinbe could only describe as awe lighting his face in a soft glow. _Zoro. Nami. Usopp. Sanji. Chopper. Robin. Franky. Brooke._ There was love suffusing his voice like Jinbe could hardly imagine, love enough to pull Luffy back from the brink of death. _I still have my crew._ Jinbe had been fortunate enough to serve under Tai's compassionate captaincy and, unofficially, Whitebeard's fatherly command, and he had spent nearly the past decade as at the very least a decent captain, and yet somehow the raw, anguished reverence in Luffy's words was something entirely new. Later, Luffy, still half-hysterical, criss-crossed between fragmented anecdotes of his childhood with Ace and adventures with his crew, hesitant and still traced through with the remnants of that initial awe. Jinbe sat, and listened, and wondered.

Luffy introduced Jinbe to his crew on Fishman Island, in the moments between a glorious, panicked reunion.

It was Jinbe's home, and yet somehow, fighting back to back with the other eight, Luffy looked more at home than any citizen of Ryugu kingdom, his smile bright and wider than a smile could possibly go, wider than Jinbe had ever seen it before. He remembered, suddenly, the grim-eyed boy staring at him from the other side of cell bars, compared him to Luffy at ease, sharing space and presence with his crew like they had not been separated two years, and realized that this, more than anything else, was what had been missing. To remove Luffy from the context of his crew was to see only part of him; the heart he had ripped out for Ace's sake had only been a fraction of a heart in the first place, because the rest was shared among his crew in a web of such intimacy that he almost felt an intruder.

Jinbe was offered a place in Luffy's crew as they lay on the ground, sharing blood in an act that was as symbolic as it was a physical necessity.

Luffy pitched the suggestion casually, as though it was of no particular importance, but Jinbe knew better, now, and knew the answer he would give without even needing to deliberate. To become part of that man's reason for living, to be someone spoken of, loved with the fervor that inspired such reverent awe, to be entrusted with a piece of Luffy's heart and to give everything of himself in return, to have a captain again... There was nothing he wanted more.

Jinbe gave himself over to Luffy twice, in defiance on top of Whole Cake Chateau and in acceptance on the open sea.

The Emperor Charlotte Linlin in front of him, looming in all her might, a great powerful figure that all with any sense would fear. But after today, Jinbe would be a Straw Hat in truth, and the Straw Hat Pirates were known for nothing if not for having no sense of fear at all. And so with his crew safely away and secure in the knowledge that that Luffy would be his captain, that Luffy in all his burning love had no conceivable end but King of the Pirates — with that knowledge and that faith and the mere thought that he held a portion of Luffy’s heart, fragile in its strength, well, he could not find a place in himself for fear. So he returned his oath-cup to the one who had held his allegiance and protected his island for the past two years, and proclaimed to all the world his loyalty to the one who would be Pirate King within the next.

And then the Thousand Sunny was escaping, fleeing through open ocean with the halting, desperate stumble of an injured animal, and the Sun Pirates were all around them, grim-eyed and brightly defiant and willing to die, and Jinbe made to sacrifice himself with them then and there, his composure just barely intact above his terror. Except then, Luffy caught his eye. The light of him was still there, still bright and awed and intimate, but the flames were banked to a kind of intensity reminiscent again of their first meeting, and Jinbe realized that — _I am your captain now!_ — that in all his horror and his panicked judgements, he had forgotten entirely about the fragment of Luffy’s heart that had been gifted him, the resolution he had made to sink into comfortable loyalty and love with a fervor that attempted to be worthy of the day Luffy would count down his reasons for living and include Jinbe in their number.

Jinbe joined Luffy’s crew on the Thousand Sunny, in a situation that was desperate, yes, but in no way alone.

 

 

**Yes, and...**

 

Jinbe is no Conqueror, no King to lay claim to the seas and their vastness, but he knows haki, and he knows very well the haki of the Conquering King.

Whitebeard, in all his glory, _resounds_ with it, the deepness of power surrounding him like the voice of a gong, echoing outwards and outwards and felt in the chest. Jinbe, a captain of his own right, is called to it nonetheless, and answers that call as best as he can without ignoring his other duties, the ones that bind him home.

(Ace has a touch of it about him too, but just a touch, a faint chime to attention so light and unknowing that Jinbe cannot even account it with certainty to haki: it could just be the way flames flicker and fight over his shoulders, desperately searching for what to become.)

Luffy, quiet, desperate, his gaze piercing from the other side of cell bars, whispers of it, just a seed, just an opening melody, but a presence so purely striking that Jinbe cannot help but put aside all his doubts and all his despair and chase it, heeding, heedless, into a war. Luffy _explodes_ there, haki screaming shrill, calling the assembled forces of bitter enemies to a second's standstill as they fall at his feet and he calls their focus to him. His haki rings like a fire bell, high and bitter and warning, and it is impossible to look away.

In the aftermath, Ace's body on the ground and Luffy streaked in tears and horror and his brother's blood, the shrill cry of his haki carries up and up and up into the still, heavy air, so high in pitch it cannot be heard, the keening call of a sovereign in mourning.

 

It comes back down on Amazon Lily, falling now with deceptive tinkling of broken glass, and Jinbe watches Luffy paste himself together again, piece by jagged broken piece, his haki steadying back out into that rhythm that had first pulled Jinbe towards him and out to battle and tugs at him now, to give all he can until he swings Luffy up onto his shoulders and they set back out towards the coast.

When they arrive, Jinbe nearly falls over. There is Luffy's haki, so close as to be ringing in his head, clear despite its unsteadiness and alluring like Jinbe has never before quite felt. There is the Pirate Empress, her haki harsh and clattering like honed iron windchimes, pulling at his sense of self and throwing him off course. And there is the Dark King's haki, muffled with untold layers of fabric to make attention slip until even Jinbe can barely hear the silvered vibrancy behind it, quieted by Will but never quite dimmed to silence. The three presences war for attention without even meaning to, full and larger-than-life, the kind of people whose legends live on beyond their grandchildrens' lifetimes. Trying to find somewhere to focus is giving Jinbe a headache.

 

And then, two years pass, and Jinbe makes too-close acquaintance with the deep discordancy of Big Mom's haki, the irregular depth of it and the dread that it sends resounding deep in his bones.

Meeting Luffy again, the sweeping symphony of his haki brushing light against Jinbe's mind and commanding attention, clear and pure as it was in Impel Down but ringing out now, joyous and full and so much greater than that original melody, is like greeting the dawn over cloudless seas, and Jinbe realizes in the calm after battle that he could follow it forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have......so much conqueror's haki fic lying around. BOY OH BOY DO I LOVE CONQUEROR'S!!! 
> 
> pls hmu for my conqueror's headcanons @grainjew on tumblr!!!!


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